Page:Miss Madelyn Mack Detective.pdf/80

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
The Missing Bridegroom
69

farther. Patiently or impatiently, I must await her pleasure to reopen our discussion.

"What shall it be?" she asked almost gaily, with her nervous alertness completely gone as she stooped over the record-case. "How would the quartet from 'Rigoletto' strike your mood? I think it would be ideal, for my part."

From Verdi we circled to Donizetti's "Lucia," and then, in an odd whim, her hand drew forth a haphazard selection from "William Tell." It was the latter part of the ballet music, and the record was perhaps half completed when the door opened—we had not heard the bell—and Susan announced Adolph Van Sutton.

Madelyn rose, but she did not stop the machine. Mr. Van Sutton plumped nervously into the seat that she extended to him, gazing with obvious embarrassment at her radiant face as she stood with her head bent forward and a faint smile on her lips, completely under the sway of Rossini's matchless music.

She stopped the machine sharply at the end of the record. When she whirled back toward us, "William Tell" had been forgotten. She was again the sharp-eyed, sharp-questioning ferret, with no thought beyond the problem of the moment. I think the transformation astonished our caller even more than the glimpse of her unexpected mood at

This article is issued from Wikisource. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.